Page 2 of Role Model

I know, as soon as we arrive, that Downing Street will be very different.

Our rooms are above the official parts of the famous building and Ilya, who helps us with security, mutters something about how it’s ugly and dull.

I disagree with him. I like looking at all of the portraits on the walls and I slide down the huge banisters a few times before Dad and Ilya wrestle me away from them.

Mum is in full robot mode. Which means she’s smiling and laughing and only talking to grownups.

Dad is on the phone constantly, speaking to friends about Mum’s new job.

Her face is all over the news, according to Gideon.

Mum turns off robot mode for one minute to tell me that Fizz is coming to pick me up and take me out, while Dad takes Gideon to his gifted children’s art class.

“Why is Fizz coming?” I ask, and my voice must sound angrier than I mean it too because both Mum and Ilya look at me with confused expressions.

“I’m going to be swamped for the next few days,” Mum starts but Keren, one of her aides, interrupts.

“You’re going to be busy for the next few years, Ma’am. Now, Aeriel. You and your sister are going out for the day, understood? We need you out from beneath our feet. Ilya will go with you.”

Fizz. My older sister and not someone I enjoy spending time with, let alone being related to.

She’s twenty years old and too loud. Her hair is a different colour every time I see her.

She has tattoos and clothes that she buys on the street.

She chugs caffeine and is always too happy and too excited about everything.

I feel like I’m a sensible pencil, the kind you’re supposed to take tests with, and Fizz is a sparkling, fluffy, brightly-coloured gel pen. The pen the teachers tell you not to bring to school.

11 We don’t look right together.

Ilya walks silently to the door and I know that’s his silent signal.

We’re leaving. Everything is going to take so much longer now.

Getting to and from places will require Ilya and the wider security team to check that it’s safe.

He’ll follow me like a shadow. Dad is making arrangements with the school already.

I think a part of me was hoping Mum might lose the election and we could all go home.

Silly.

I wait for Mum to say goodbye. I hover in the doorway. But she’s murmuring with Keren and reading something on a tablet. Her frown lines are showing and two more people have come into the room.

So, I leave. Without her even noticing.

*

When we’re safely away from Whitehall and in Green Park, we both spot Fizz under a tree.

It looks like she’s asleep. I feel myself scowl.

Of course, she’s the kind of person to happily sleep in public.

Her long hair is candy-floss pink today.

Her earrings are enormous and she’s wearing a denim jacket that has loads of different signatures scribbled on it.

She has a beauty 12 mark tattooed onto her upper left cheekbone.

When Mum confronted her about it, she said it was easier than drawing it on every day.

I clear my throat and her eyes shoot open.

“Well, good afternoon, babe.”

She calls everyone ‘babe’. “Why didn’t you come to the house?”

She stays on the grass, her back still pressed against the tree. “The house? Is that what we’re calling it? I think it’s more of an office. Or a prison.”

Fizz is a lot older than me and was in boarding school for most of her life.

She moved away from home when she was seventeen and went to Paris.

Then Dublin. Then Prague. When she finally crash-landed in London, Mum would call and ask her about going to university to get a degree and it would always end in an argument.

I’ve never really lived with her. She doesn’t feel like a sister. Just a colourful stranger who comes over for Christmas.

“Looking very serious there, babe. But then, you always do,” she says to me.

“Can you get up? I want to go.”

“Where are we going? What could be better than this big old tree? I’ll give you a boost, you can climb it!”

13 “Anywhere else is better.”

“Fine,” she sighs. She reaches out to Ilya. “Give me a hand, comrade.”

His lips twitch and he helps her up. He’s the only one in our entire family circle who finds her amusing.

“So,” she says as we walk across the frosted grass in the cold November sun. “How’s school?”

Awful. Weird. I have these friends but they make me want to cry every single day. “Fine.”

“Uh oh.”

I scowl. “No, it’s fine.”

We’re walking up Regent Street and as we pass Hamleys, the toy shop, Fizz squeals and throws her body against the big glass window.

“Oh, babe, look at the beautiful dolls!”

Ilya smiles a tiny smile, but I feel my ears turn red. I glance around, making sure that none of the passers-by have seen a grown woman cry in delight over some children’s toys in pink dresses.

“They’re stupid and they’re for little kids.”

“Ssh, they’ll hear you!” Fizz cries, aghast at me. “And they’re not just for little kids, they’re for anyone. Come on, I’ll buy you one. Ooh, look at the one in the pink spacesuit.”

She clasps my hand but I wrench it away. “No!”

14 “Babe, let me get you a toy. I can get you a truck if you don’t want the pretty ones? Or a board game. What about the one with all the frogs?”

“No, can we just go!”

I’m irritable and snappy. I never used to be. I don’t like how I sound. I sound like someone no one would want to be around and I don’t know why. Some unknown force is making me like this.

I turn to start walking up the street, when I stop dead. I see three girls looking into the window of the designer shop a little further up from the toy shop. They’re taking a picture on their phones of one of the bags on display.

Sable, Jaya and Ana. They’re all together without me.

The sight of the three of them makes me want to never go to school again.

In fact, it makes me want to leave the country.

We’re all in an email thread, because Mum says I can’t have a smart phone, and on it they all promised that they were too busy with family stuff this weekend.

Jaya had this whole story about her cousin’s wedding and Ana said her mother needed her to help with a video.

I realise now that they probably have a group chat without me.

Ana glances away from the window display for 15 a second, and catches my eye.

Surprise lights up her face and then I see the mortification of being caught.

She turns as red as the buses that pass us on Regent Street.

She looks away quickly and Jaya and Sable both notice.

They glance over and Jaya’s face is completely emotionless.

Sable splutters out a laugh and slaps her hands over her mouth.

“Come on,” she tells the others, and they walk speedily away from me.

I watch them rush up towards Oxford Street.

When they think they’re out of earshot, they all break into shrieks of laughter and my blood is as cold as the air around us.

I feel frost creeping in, winding around my bones and clenching my heart.

I read a story once about a boy who had a piece of ice in his eyes and it spread to his heart.

This feels like that.